It’s been quite a while since we’ve sat down and digitally shared our thoughts and feelings on latest works. The last 18 – 24 months has been pretty insane as its seemed that we’ve been filming project after project with barely a chance to slow down to catch a minute of downtime. We’re happy to say that after 2 extremely busy years, we’ve had a bit of a breather and are now able to connect with you all once again. There are quite a few films that we’ll be sharing with you in the upcoming weeks and we’re stoked about it!! We wanted to start off with Christine & Gerry’s (C&G) film because in many ways this project pushed us to produce a story on a totally different level.
If you’re reading this before watching the film you’ll quickly notice that we worked Keith Langille’s (officiant) account of C&G’s story into this piece. If you’ve ever attended a ceremony given by Keith, or his wife Lynne, you’ll quickly come to realize that this is not your typical wedding ceremony. I believe we share a similar philosophy in that emphasizing the ‘element of story’ allows us to engage all who are experiencing the moment. Influencing a film with contextual layers is the reason people connect with a particular story and ultimately determines how well received the film (or moment) is. Being able to incorporate the element of a narrated story gives us a little more freedom during filming/editing and ultimately allows us to produce an emotional connect with our couples and our audience.
In the early stages of the film, Keith refers to C&G’s relationship coming together as a process of steps. “Steps from a journey with a deeper sense of purpose”. This is something that we not only took to heart in post production, but also as a guideline to how the film should play itself out. The “process of steps” and creating a film “with a deeper sense of purpose” was constantly on our minds. The process that each team member (vendor) brought to making this wedding happen was a story in itself. Christine touches on this earlier in the film as she makes a special thanks to Randy, Phil and Colin for having built their house in time to host all 200 guests from out of town.
I think it would be pretty accurate to say that this was one of the most challenging weddings we’ve worked on to date. 6 days of filming left our hard drives close to being maxed out as we had a little more than 400 Gigabytes of footage to work with when production came to an end… yikes. Working with such a massive library of footage was no easy task, so we literally took Keith’s advice and broke this project into steps (mini projects) before bringing it all together into one edit. Hundreds of hours went into this film as we’d invested 300+ hours of preproduction, filming, travel, editing and colouring, to complete C&G’s story.
We feel this film represents the kind and caring couple we’ve come to know since we first met in 2012. There were obvious elements in the story such as Gerry getting his hands dirty and helping the crew setup days before the wedding to Christine’s love for animals. In our eyes these are only two elements worked into the story of who C&G are.
One unique aspect of this production was that we were able to really bond with the entire wedding production team and see first hand how much effort each teams’ involvement required. It was something you really had to witness to believe. Some of the team worked non-stop around the clock to make what seemed to be the impossible happen. So we only felt it would be fitting that they Cameo in the film as well. It was through our close friends at Chic Wedding Planning that we met C&G and were able to work with this amazingly talented team listed below.
Mark
Julie Barake // Wedding Planner & Designer
Keith Langille // Officiant
Erin Carmichael // Floral Design
David & Christine McCaffrey // Bridal Dress custom Design
Matt Somers // Cake Artist
Quality Entertainment // Entertainment
Details Ottawa // Decore
Melanie Rebane // Photographer
Tulips & Maple // Artistic Caterer
Vito Michienzi // Magician
Radical Balloons // Balloon Artist
Music Licensed by themusicbed.com
Artists / Track:
Anderson East / Fire Song
Les Enfants / It Was Good
